User blog:U-Knighted/Making categories more useful
Over the years, categories have become an easy way to farm edits on the wiki. This has lead to an oversaturation of useless categories like "alien" or "augmented melee". The category system has become basically useless because of how nonsensical things are categorized. If you're looking for something easy to edit, please help by removing useless categories from pages, and streamlining categories altogether. How to Delete a Category Unfortunately fandom does not offer a feature to delete a category from all pages it appears in, so instead a category must be manually deleted page by page. The category editor can be found in the visual editor on the right side of the page near the bottom. To trash a category, simply press the "trash" icon. You can view the entire list of categories here: '''https://castlecrashers.fandom.com/wiki/Special:Categories Categories to be Deleted Categories that are deleted are either categories that add nothing to a page, or categories that are too niche and don't apply to enough pages. *ALL TIER CATEGORIES -- The tier list changes too often for tiers to be included on main articles. *MAGIC CATEGORIES -- Things describing a character's magic, such as "arrow rain" or "bomb thrower" are not useful. The only categories pertaining to the characters magic should be Elemental and/or Non-elemental. If they are elemental, then a category should be added on which element. (See below section for more on elemental/non-elemental) *GAMEPLAY -- Gameplay is not a category. Almost every single article relates to gameplay. If you see this category, delete it. *PLAYABLE/NON-PLAYABLE ENEMIES -- This category is redundant since playable enemies already have both the "enemies" and "playable characters" categories. (Also, "Former villians" means the same thing, so delete that as well.) *CHARACTER CATEGORIES -- For example, there are currently six pages marked "Alien", his own page, his weapon, his pet, etc. This is not useful. *USELESS ADJECTIVES -- Usually, if a category doesn't pertain to an in-game stat, then it's not useful. An example of a useless adjective category is the category "industrial". *BROAD TERMS -- Broad term categories are categories that might practically apply to the page, but are too broad to add much. For instance, the Pirate Ship level currently has the category "Melee". Although it is true that you do use melee on this level, you also use melee on any other level. *MOST WEAPON CATEGORIES -- Weapon categories aren't very useful in general. The only categories used for weapon pages should be "Weapons", and then a category about their elemental effect/crit chance. Things like "joke weapons" or "anti-negative stats" should be removed. *FAKE ELEMENT CATEGORIES -- There are only four elements in the game: Fire, Ice, Lightning, and Poison. Things like "Dark" or "Love" are not elements. *ANIMAL/PET -- It's already been confirmed that the canonical terminology for these are "Animal Orbs", so these categories should be removed. (They're redundant, anyway) *LEVELS -- This category has been misused a lot, and it's kind of an innacurate name. Things like the Thieves Arena is not a level, but something like level 256 is. This category should be replaced by "Locations". *"REFERENCES" -- Generally, a line should be drawn between a category and a reference. The bear boss page currently has "rammy" as a category. Although it would be appropriate to add to the bottom of the page in the "see also" section, it should not be added as a category. ''JUST BECAUSE SOMETHING IS NOT LISTED HERE, '''DOES NOT MEAN IT SHOULDN'T BE DELETED.'' Categories to be Kept, Modified, or Merged A category is used to identify a page and pages that are similar to it. The category should relate to the page subject's statistics and practical nature. As stated above, a category should not 'be a reference. *CHARACTERS -- This category, although broad, is fine. *PLAYABLE/NON-PLAYABLE CHARACTERS -- Also works. "Enemies" should also be added to pages of characters that you fight in the game. *ELEMENTAL -- This category should be added to a character with ''any kind of elemental attack. Their entire kit does not have to be elemental to get this category. *NON-ELEMENTAL -- This category should be added to a character with any kind of non-elemental attack. The only characters that shouldn't have this category are ones that have exclusively elemental kits, such as Blue Knight. *SPECIFIC ELEMENT CATEGORIES -- As stated above, there should only be four of these: Ice, Fire, Lightning, and Poison. Add these to characters pages where they elements in one or more of their attacks, '''or '''weapon pages that have these elemental effect chances. (Additionally, the "critical hit" category can stay on weapon pages.) *DLC -- This category is fine. *ALLY -- This category should be modified to only include characters that help you throughout the game. Right now it includes characters like pink knight and hatty, who, although aren't necessarily "bad guys", they make no appearance in the regular game to assist the player. This category should only include grey knight, king, peasant/civilian, and all of the animal mounts *ANIMAL ORBS -- Keep this in lieu of the aforementioned "animal" and "pet" categories. *LOCATIONS -- Keep this in lieu of the aforementioned "levels" category. *IMAGE CATEGORIES -- These should be kept... for the most part. I'm yet to see a poor image category... but I'm sure it exists. ''JUST BECAUSE SOMETHING IS NOT LISTED HERE, '''DOES NOT MEAN IT SHOULD BE DELETED.'' Why do this? Since most of the wiki is already content-complete, our main priority should be making that content as acessible and comprehensible as possible. The perfect starting point is categories, since they're easy and quick to edit, and they can help a lot of new players explore game content effortlessly -- but only when they're useful. Category:Blog posts Category:Announcements